Linke - Artinfo

The Art of Living
50
Above, Yiqing Yin
backstage at the
Paris show for her
Fall-Winter 2012
collection.
Opposite, clockwise
from left: a
sketch for one of
the designs in the
Spring-Summer
2013 collection;
four runway looks
from the Spring-
Summer 2013
collection; an
ensemble from the
Fall-Winter 2012
collection, edged
in white feathers.
ARToNThecATwAlk
pictures with details of intricate knots and beautiful tensions
with the skin, as well as rays of light decomposing into stardust,
and spiderwebs with galactic compositions of water drops.
How different was this collection from previous ones?
The earlier collections were about the human body and
animals. The last collection was more about the vegetal and
the mineral. This time, it was about finding knots, tensions, and
the tangling of shapes upon the body, as well as the unweaving
movement of networks of matter around the body. The thread
theme was a beautiful way to treat the contrast between its
violence and sharpness on one hand and its complete fragility
on the other. I liked this paradox, so I pushed the study of
“lines,” from thread to fabric, fiber to ropes, chains, Swarovski
line patterns, velvet devorés, metal rope sculpture, etc.
This collection had a few sculptural pieces, but was
overall a much sleeker silhouette.
Indeed, the overall silhouette is a stretched-out vertical one,
quite strict in a sense, and close to the body. Semi-structured
tailoring, with details of draping in luxury Escorial fabric [the
world’s finest naturally grown wool], which is traditionally used
for menswear tailoring for outerwear, along with a lot of
jerseys for dresses and skirts. I wanted the garments to be
comfortable, flattering, and easy to relate to. All the sculptural
and draping vocabulary is injected more subtly in fine details,
but follows the landscape of the body without damaging its
proportions, for a very wearable result. The piping on the front
of the legs is one of the many small details found throughout
the collection. Apart from the interesting variations in tone it
provides, it helps highlight the verticality of the slim silhouette.
Some of the dresses seem to have applied thread
embroidery on top.
Yes, the dresses are in silk organza with three different sizes
of thread applied as embroidery, along with dustings of
crystal pearls spread along some areas. In one dress, the
embroideries hold the draping details and pleats close to the
body, as if circulating in and out of it. In another, the very
fragile embroidery is composed so as to give an almost liquid
feel to the threads, as if dripping from the inside of the
second-skin dress.
In your previous collection, the key focus was the
back. What about this time?
Backs are still a very important and sensual element of the
silhouette. Back details such as décolletés, slits, cutouts, and
fountain drapes are the counterbalance to the otherwise
austere and strict front lines.
What does this most recent collection say about you
as a designer?
I think it is important as a designer to be in coherence with a
generation. Clothes are meant to be worn, so I tried to make
real clothes for real women to live in, without sacrificing any of
the creativity and poetry of my garments. It is harder to work
the codes with subtlety, and my maturing as a designer is all
about the balance between offering people dreams and
creating a realistic product to be made their own, but with a
strong identity value. There are multiple layers of reading in
complexity. Sometimes less is more, and the true value of
luxury is found in control, precision, and balance, rather than
dramatic decoration.
MARCH/APRIL 2013 | BlouinArtinfo.comAsiA
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: YIQING YIN; FIVE IMAGES, SHOJI FUJII AND YIQING YIN.
OPPOSITE: JONATHAN P. LEVY AND YIQING YIN.
You sketch but also use swatches of fabrics to build the
garment on your mannequin. It’s a very sculptural approach.
It is. It’s a very instinctive and sensitive approach. I draw a
rough-proportion sketch to note the idea, but most of the
design I find while sculpting directly on the mannequin. So the
creative process happens directly, with the draping action.
Is draping part of your signature design?
I think so. Draping is a way to construct garments; it’s a very
traditional construction method, as opposed to flat
patterning. I do most of my designs by draping, in volume, in
three dimensions. But I also think that by de-structuring and
changing the traditional method of draping, I’ve found
interesting new elements, shapes, and volumes. Pleating is
also recurrent in my work, because I think it’s quite an
interesting technique, with a lot of potential to develop
from a flat surface into a multifaceted, three-dimensional
garment. Pleating gives dynamics to a flat surface.
By contorting the fabric you can create something complex
to the eye, which is also quite mathematical in a way.
You launched a ready-to-wear collection in 2012. How do
you approach that differently from couture?
Ready-to-wear is about working the product—starting from an
ideal but making it accessible for the customer. Couture does
not have a meaning if, in the end, the ideal is not worn by a
woman. I don’t want to be elitist. The couture pieces on the
runway are more experimental, which allows me complete
creative freedom with no restrictions. Couture is like a
laboratory, and from those experiments we pick the strongest
influences and translate them for ready-to-wear.
BlouinArtinfo.comAsiA | MARCH/APRIL 2013
85